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After what I had learned, engaging in any kind of a conversation with my grandma became a challenge. I had no actual hate toward her whatsoever. She was unaware of what my mother was hiding from me and wasn't the true culprit or cause of my unhappy mood.

Had they been more forceful in getting my brother and I away from my mother, then what happened in Maine last April would've never occurred. People wouldn't have gotten hurt, I wouldn't have received death threats, and my reputation in Maine wouldn't be a joke. I hadn't contact anyone back home and there was a reason behind it all. A reason I still wasn't comfortable talking about.

It was morning now and I was having breakfast with grandma, pretending to not think too much of our talk yesterday. Hunter was still in bed upstairs and hadn't come down for breakfast yet.

I pushed the food around on my plate and sighed at the content that still remained.

"You haven't eaten any of your breakfast," grandma noted, motioning to my plate.

I threw the napkin down. "I ate the toast."

"Hardly. You didn't really eat your dinner either. Is something wrong?"

"My entire time with my mother is currently being questioned." I raised from my seat. "Please excuse me so I can go back to listening to music in my room."

"You keep playing Fiona Apple's music like your trapped in the nineties."

"I'm a sullen girl." I replied meekly.

"Stop being so melodramatic, Silvia." Grandma huffed. "I know what will cheer you up."

"A new mother?" I guessed. "I think it's a little too late for that."

"I was thinking more in the lines of you, Hunter, and I going to the country club this afternoon. It's sunny out. There's a lot of people your age there."

"Yeah, lots of people who go to my school. I see them enough there; I don't want to see them on my weekends."

"Is there someone at school that is bothering you?" Grandma asked, looking at me with a new expression on her face. I hadn't even opened my mouth to answer her when she began to speak again. "I want to know who. If it's a Ridgewood, I can most definitely handle it."

That caught me off guard. "Why is a Ridgewood family member your first guess?"

"Because our families have had issues since the dawn of time," she said so effortlessly. "Long before even I was born, there was an issue with them. It's my first guess because there's no one else that has had such an established hate against us. Don't you already know that?"

"I mean, I know there was some kind of problem back when my dad was in school, but I wasn't aware of there being tension before."

"Much longer before then." She nodded and told me to sit down. I took my seat back at the dinner table and tucked my chair in. "Back in the 1820s, the Ridgewood family was already making their own little fortune up in New York. They were well known for their architectural jobs around the city, building hotels and running them as well. They soon became tough competition. It was one of our family members, Ronald Hyland, who convinced them to come over to California to join in on the search of gold during the California Gold Rush in the 1840s. Now, when they finally got there, it was toward the mid-1850s, which was closer to the end of the Gold Rush. They didn't tell the Ridgewood's family that most of the gold had already been discovered and that the place they were sending them off to mainly had Pyrite."

"Fool's gold?" I said after her.

"Yes, that." She supplied. "When they got here, they used a lot of their fortune to build that large house of theirs on top of the hill in Crescent Heights. Once they started searching, they dried out all of their money, making them stuck in California. My great-great-grandfather, Ronald Hyland, took advantage of their absence in New York. The Ridgewood family was no longer a part of the hotel business, they weren't dominating it like they did before. It helped branch out the Hyland hotel to how it is now, booming and blossoming from many places around the world."

The reason to why Dakota kept bringing up my father's wealthy had more meaning behind it. I couldn't believe what she had told me. It was my great-great-great-grandfather who had stolen their luxury living so he could have a slice of it for himself. Dakota's life would've been completely different if it hadn't been for my family's deceptive, manipulative ways.

I knew, not too long ago, I had said that I wanted to stop my mini investigation on what really occurred in Crescent Heights in the late 1980s, but after what I'd just discovered, I was only itching to learn more.

"Does this have any connection to what my dad?"

"You mean with what he did to poor Dona Ridgewood?" I pretended like I knew what she meant and nodded my head. "Oh God no, that has no connection to what Ronald Hyland did. What your father did was sadistic and heartbreaking. I'm sure the men of Crescent High at the time only saw him as a god for the legacy he left, but I can assure you that it wasn't a happy day for me."

A thumping noise echoed into the dining hall, cutting into our conversation. Hunter appeared at the opening of the room with my phone in his right hand, scratching the back of his head. "Your phone keeps ringing. I could hear it from all the way in my room."

"I thought I turned it off." Grandma said. "It doesn't matter. Turn it off and come have some breakfast with us before it gets cold."

I sprang out of my seat. "Let me check who's calling first."

Snatching up the phone from Hunter, I noticed the multiple missed calls and new text messaged I had received since Friday. Every single one of them were from Dakota. I gave a short apology to my grandma, explaining that I simply had to take care of something important. She didn't look too happy, but she let me excuse myself anyway.

I skimped through the text messages, but they were practically identical to each other. Repeatedly, he asked if I had gone to Maine yet, if I was okay, and if I wanted him to pick me up from my house and drive to his place or just to get out of town.

I called him back and someone picked up after the first ring.

"Silvia, is that you?" He slurred. "I kept calling and calling and calling, but that stupid lady in your phone kept telling me to leave a message after the beep. I didn't want to talk with her. She's not very nice. She wouldn't let me talk to you. And I need to talk to you."

I shouldn't have seen this as funny or amusing, but a smile found its way on my face no matter how hard I tried to hold it back. He was clearly drunk. "I'm here right now, Kota. You can talk to me."

"But you aren't really here. You're in a phone."

I only smiled even harder. "I can come over."

"Yeah, you can." His voice lightened up. "Oh, no you can't. You're in Maine."

"No I'm-"

"You're in Maine," he repeated, louder this time. "You're gone. You're never coming back. I can't get you back, can I? It's too late. I spent so much time making you mad when I should've been making you happy. Making you mine."

"You still have time," my voice wavered.

He heaved a breath. "No, I don't. You're gone."

The line went dead.

I tried to call him back again, but he wouldn't pick up. Rushing back into the dining room, I asked grandma if I could leave.

"Where do you need to go?" she asked.

"I'm going to drive over to a friend's house."

She started to get up from her seat. "Let me drive you-"

"No, I'd rather drive myself if you don't mind."

She raised a brow. "Who is it you're in such a rush to getting to?"

"Dakota Ridgewood," Hunter took the words out of my mouth, biting into a slice of turkey bacon. "I already know that's where you're heading off to."

"Dakota Ridgewood? Isn't that the one with a daughter?"

My heart nearly skipped a beat, and definitely not in a good way.

"No, that's Dion Ridgewood," Hunter corrected her. "Dakota is the one with the drinking problem and too many tattoos. Remember last summer when Maven ended up in a hospital? Yeah, that was Dakota's fault. He tried to run him off the road in his car, and when that didn't go well he beat him to a pulp."

"No." I refused to believe that. "That isn't the same Dakota I know."

"It sure as hell looked like him." Hunter scoffed. "The judge should've done something more than send him to juvie again. It's obviously not fixing any of his problems. He needs some serious help."

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Song for the Chapter: Anti Anti by Snowden

Lyrics:

❝Inebriation leads revelation

....

I will burn your love letters in a parking deck

where I have harbored great things that I will never confess.❞

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